He sobs, and sobs, and he cannot breathe for it, and between the choking sensation and the cold Gaeta feels a wild panic rising. All at once he's back on the Raptor: stranded, bloodied, surrounded by bodies, minutes from dying himself but too cowardly to take matters into his own hands. Shattered in body and spirit. How could anyone put him back together after that? After this?

His bad leg starts to buckle, but he doesn't fall. Impossibly, Angel still keeps hold. And so he clutches its shirt and keeps sobbing like he's bleeding out. He passes through every shade of his grief -- betrayals, lost friends, dead family, two hundred prisoners, thirteen lifeless planets, Galactica herself on the verge of death after four years of war -- and it feels just like he feared it would. It doesn't stop. It won't end, gods, it won't ever end, there will only be this hopelessness renting him apart forever, how will he bear it, he can't, he can't.

But it does end. Eventually, slowly, and mostly because Gaeta... well, he can't bear it any longer. Too exhausted, and in too much pain, his crying trickles into a shivering silence.